How to be a SUMO Locale Leader

Table of Contents

Who are Locale Leaders?

Being a SUMO locale leader is a fun and rewarding task. You help coordinate with your community the work around SUMO, motivate contributors, review articles, onboard new localizers and help contributors grow.
You don't have to do all of this - just translating and reviewing is already great - but building a healthy and fun community around you will help you get the work done faster and will bring you the joy of collaboration and perhaps new friends.

If you started your locale at SUMO, you have technically been a Locale Leader with your very first contribution. Not everyone is interested in being a Locale Leader from the start, though - this page should help you decide whether you can (and want to) become one.

Above all, being a Locale Leader is a great exercise in organization, leadership, and communication.

As a Locale Leader, you are encouraged to keep localizing and contributing new revisions to the KB. This way, you will learn from your own work and the work of others.

As a Locale Leader, you will have a chance to:

Greet new members of the SUMO community who want to localize into your language

Work together with other Locale Leaders and Reviewers on guiding all Editors in their work:

through 1:1 mentoring on language and quality

through documentation (e.g. a Style Guide)

Help organize and attend regional and global Mozilla events

Communicate with and be a part of the global localization community

Provide fair reviews of contributions provided by all Editors in your locale - and provide constructive feedback on their quality, which includes:

Approving good revisions and encouraging Editors to continue their great work

Rejecting revisions that can be improved, and letting their authors know what and why could be better

What skills can you practice and develop as a Locale Leader?

Localizing for the web, between English and your target (native) locale

Ensuring quality for online localization

Managing projects remotely (and directly)

Communicating asynchronously for collaborative and creative goals

Mentoring others remotely/directly

Coordinating an online community of like-minded people

State of your locale

It's important that you know how your locale is doing. Your best friend in finding out quickly is the dashboard, where you see the localization coverage, the articles needing translation and review.
You can find your dashboard from the "contributors tools" menu on the top, or you can visit our list of locales.

From the Dashboard you can find some very useful links on the left side:

Locale metrics: shows you the metrics over time, so that you can understand how your locale has been doing and how many contributors have been active historically.

Localization team: here you will see the team and each member's roles and activities. As a locale leader you will be able to grant contributors reviewer rights. This makes it very easy for you to spot newcomers and see who has been active in the past 90 days.

Recent revisions: here you will be able to see exactly what revisions have been made. You will be able to refine your search by username and date range.

Aggregated metrics: here you will be able to see how your locale is doing compared to others.

If you "hit a milestone", you can update the list in the spreadsheet with a smiley. Don't forget to contact Michał about it, too - thanks!

If you have questions about the priorities for your locale, please contact Michał.

How to build a community

Building a community is a great way to reach all your goals at SUMO and having a lot of fun while doing it. Some great friendships were born here, so you might end up having a lot of friends. Building a healthy community is an art that gets interpreted very differently by everyone. We'll give you some ideas and tools, you can use the ones that adapt the best to your style:

Be friendly: being friendly is one of the easiest and most effective ways to build a community and encourage people to help. Simple phrases like "hello", "thank you", and "great to see you again" are really powerful.

Create helpful materials: this will make it easier for new contributors to get started. Creating a style guide/glossary and sharing best tips with all other localizers will also help you, and make the whole community better.

Reward contributors: telling other contributors how great they are in private and public is a great way to motivate them and show appreciation. You can ask for swag from the SUMO team as well! Contact Michał for more information.

Organize events: organizing events online or offline is a great way to get to know your community better and get an extra boost of motivation to achieve a goal. Contact Michał for more information.

Communicate: use your country / region Mozilla site, language or regional mailing lists, your locale's forum thread, chat or video calls, Telegram groups... - anything that works for you and other members of the community to make working together easier and more fun.